dear [redacted]
i really wish i never listened to a thing you said to me. you were someone i looked up to and i took your word as gospel. and once i realized what i had done wrong it was too late. its nothing against you. we just were never good for each other.
--
dear e
i miss you so much i wish i never did what i did. two times. i did it TWO damn times and i never learned. it took me a year to realize what a jerk i was to you and what a creep i was at that one point in our lives. just because i didn't know how to talk to you about things didn't mean i had to be passive aggressive, or take things to an extreme just because someone encouraged me to. i don't know what i was thinking. my head isn't clear anymore because of what i've done but it's clear enough for me to know that i was almost entirely in the wrong. you weren't at all. but that's not what i would say to you if you ever found this apology.
you wouldn't find it, or give me the time of day, and i don't blame you. i'd be lucky to get a passing glance from you anymore. sometimes i still wake up wanting to talk to you about the things that frustrate me about the people at our school, or i'll sit in bed remembering the times we talked about this exact thing happening. you told me i wouldn't go downhill and i said i couldn't promise you that. i said i knew that i'd mess up time and time again, and i did. i messed up horribly weeks after that. because i couldn't figure out how to handle my own irrational emotions, i took it out on our friendship. i cut the tie without thinking of what it meant to either of us. i shattered your trust and lost my best friend. i could blame it all day on the people around me who told me to cut off any relationship that god forbid required a bit of communication, or the people who told me out of bias to stop speaking with you. and i could blame it on being a dumb kid. but that's always only going to be part of it. i was old enough to tell right from wrong and what i did was entirely wrong.
i never told you what was going on during that time period and i can't - won't - elaborate on that, but i was going through something that made me more emotionally vulnerable than usual, and i suppose i just let my impulse control go. you probably knew to a degree that something was wrong. it was obvious that you were uncomfortable around her as i was, as everyone was. but that didn't give me the right to ruin our friendship. he gave me chances to think through it rationally, told me to talk to you directly, but i was panicking. i told [redacted] that i'd cut contact because they were tired of me asking for advice on how to deal with concerns i had. i know now i should have gone to you directly because our friendship was worth salvaging.
our last talk always stuck in my head. the last thing i said to you before i decided to act like a fool. it always felt like foreshadowing to me. maybe i look too much into things, but i always have. i really, really always have looked far too deeply into every situation. that's what got me into this situation. i looked too deep into some things that [redacted] said to me and i thought that they actually did care about me. you could tell from our group chat that i cared a lot about him but it was quite obviously unreciprocated, platonic or otherwise. i lived like an idiot back then, treating people like they were disposable despite claiming to be nice. i had never been as kind as everyone assumed i was because of my withdrawn nature. i understand how untrustworthy and shady this does make me seem, and i was very much not a mature or trustworthy person back then. i always said i was a work in progress, but it seems like i just began getting better instead of worse.
that being said, i know if you saw this, you would be skeptical. i said this all last time. i said this the first time i cut you off because of L, and i didn't really know if i meant it. i assumed that i could handle it better this time, but i never could. regardless, i have changed astronomically since our last conversation. i changed in ways both outward and inward. for example, i finally accepted that i'm ftm, which i don't recall ever even considering when we spoke. i go by a different name now, which goes without saying (my birthname never did fit me, did it?), and i'd like to think i've calmed down. maybe it's something that comes with being older. i figured out that the shallow crushes i kept getting on people were just that - shallow crushes. since i've met someone who i feel is 'the one' for me, i haven't gotten those anymore. i think i was just attention starved and confused about my feelings, in all honesty.
i've gotten a few cats since then. i wanted to show them to you each time, and there's moments when they do funny cat things and i've wanted to show you videos, but i know it would be nervy of me to just message you as if we ended on good terms. as if our friendship was just on a hiatus instead of my overreactive definitive "NO" that i refused to reconsider.
i believe that's the most important part of how i've changed, at least in regards to this hypothetical letter. it took me a long time of thinking but i realize now that you do deserve an apology. it would have helped to not have friends who were so eager to please that they heard the full situation, heard my questions of if it was right, but still decided to rush to tell me i was doing nothing wrong. i always said i needed new friends, but there are hardly any people from our school to pick from. i vaguely remember the last thing you said to me in person, i don't recall what you said but i do know that you used my chosen name. for some reason that stuck with me too. i guess it kind of showed me that you weren't the person that [redacted] made you out to sound like.
i wish i could work up the guts to send this to you. we still have each others hangouts and i really wish i could send you something just so you know. just so you can know that i don't hate you, that you don't have to wonder why i did what i did and what my half-hearted excuse meant. i just want to clear things up with us. i take full responsibility for how badly i screwed up this time and i know it might not be something i can go back and change, but making amends is the least i can do.
i guess you'll never see this and it's just the lazy 5am talk of some tired guy talking himself in circles online, but a small part of me wishes that maybe writing this will give me some sort of direction. maybe i'll figure out if i should just let it be, or if i should talk to S about it - he always did care a lot about us both even if he didn't understand parts of who i am and it hurt a bit, or if i should just talk to you upfront. well... we have one more year for me to think about what the right thing to do would be, and you never know what happens in a year. i guess we just have to wait and see.
-dani
/ under construction.